Topher Browne's ASJ article from the 2013 season

Submitted from Wyatt Thayler, Seattle fire fighter and winner of T&Ts name the rod contest.

I awake in the middle of a big soft bed in a room that I don't recognize - an omen of good adventure that I've known since childhood.  The walls are planks of wood that smell of the forest even though they were milled over a hundred years ago.  The early morning light slants into the room through a canopy of trees high above the window.  It occurs to me that I am in a cabin, a lodge actually in a forest far away from home.  I am at Camp Brûlé on the banks of the Little Cascapedia on the Gaspé Peninsula and I am here to fish for Atlantic salmon!  

That I am here at all is stroke of fisherman's luck, a small amount of cunning and great deal of generosity on the part of Thomas and Thomas Fly Rods and the staff at Camp Brûlé. Two years ago Thomas And Thomas fly rods introduced a new line of spey rods and held a contest to help them pick a name for the new line-up. I won that contest.  Another guy won too.  Both of us submitted DNA as a name for the new rods.  So now here I am a trout fisherman and itinerant steelheader from the west coast angling for perhaps the greatest game fish the Atlantic Ocean has to offer.

In the dining room the guests gather for breakfast and to trade notes on the beats they'll fish this day.  I pour myself a cup of coffee and say my good mornings.  Fresh fruit and pastries have already been put out and I am helping myself to some of these when I meet the kitchen staff. Hostess Sue is a wonder and keeps the kitchen running smoothly always smiling and laughing. She asks me how I would like my eggs and if I want bacon or sausage or bacon AND sausage.Dee was the evening hostess that week and she’s great too. Lisa the cook, put out some gourmet meals that had me worried for my waist line. Believe it or not the the adventure gets even better from here.  

Three days, three guides and three different rivers.  That's Joe the Guide, Spey Steve, Capitaine Kevin, and the main Grand Cascapedia, Lake Branch of the Grand Cascapedia and the Little Cascapedia.  Each guide was as different as the rivers we fished yet the waters and the men were familiar in a comfortable sense like the friends and the streams in my own neck of the woods.  Sadly I didn’t get a shot on the Bonaventure with Big Bert, but everyone that fished with him through the rotation enjoyed themselves.

I touched fish every day.  My first ever Atlantic salmon, a five pound grilse, came to a hitched muddler on the Lake Branch.  Here the water showed the faintest touch of tannins as it flowed through cobbled pools and boulder studded riffles, a mountain stream by any measure.  Stephen watched my spey cast, told me what was wrong with it and how to fix it.  It took until the end of the trip for his advice to sink in but I think I got it now.  

The next day I found myself on the lower Grand Cascapedia.  Joe parked the truck on a gravel bar not far above the upper reach of the tide.  The effects of seasonal flood are evident as last year's and next year's channels lay dry and exposed for now much like the coastal rivers on the Olympic Peninsula back home.  My hitched muddler brought up another grilse here but it came unbuttoned just before I could land it.  "Because you played it like a steelhead," according to Joe.

My favorite stream and as far as I can tell the best river in the area, was the Little Cascapedia.  Its short choppy rapids, glassy pools, rock ledges and air clear water reminded  of the Sol Duc River a bedrock confined  river back home.  Camp Brule sits on the banks of the Little Cascapedia just a short float down from Jack Louis, the best pool on the river, which as far as I'm concerned is the best river in the area.  It was late one evening, the full moon just rising above the tree tops that I hooked and landed a 15lb salmon.  She took my fly just under the surface, the water exploded at the exact same time I felt the rod nearly pull from my hand.  If  ‘Capitaine' or the other sport had been watching they would have seen that the take actually scared the hell out of me.  It was awesome!

I will always remember fishing at Camp Brûlé as an adventure that was a success before it even began.  I learned a few things up there;  slow down on that spey cast, every run should have a hitched muddler swung through it and always fish as if you are lucky just to be there.

Cheers,

Wyatt

Specialty Guests Announced for 2014 Season

Howdy Folks,

I hope everyone is healthy and enjoying 2014. It's certainly been a wild winter to date here in the Northeast, kicking off in late November and then bouncing up and down with a few weeks of extreme cold and snow followed by a few days of mild weather and rain. Hard to say how this will effect the fishing in June but we should have a lot of water to kick things off!

After a very good and very busy 2013 fishing season, I was happy to return home for a bit  spending time with my family, and work around the house. Now though, after spending more than a few days shoveling excessive amounts of snow, I am looking forward to getting back to the camp and getting into the 2014 season. I think that everyone involved with our specialty guest format last year really enjoyed the experiences and came away as enthusiastic about the possibilities as I did! To that end I’d like to let everyone know about what we have on tap in 2014.

Lots going on these days and some of you may have seen the latest edition of the Atlantic Salmon Journal (http://www.asf.ca/main.html) and a fantastic article on Camp Brûlé written by Topher Browne. Topher did a great job, I think, capturing the essence of our efforts at Brûlé. Its easy to understand why his book on Atlantic salmon, Salmon Magic, was so well received! If you haven't checked it out, you really should. Salmon Magic covers a lot of ground regarding all aspects of Atlantic salmon and I highly recommend it. (http://www.wildriverpress.com/Atlantic-Salmon-Magic-by-Topher-Browne.html)

Continuing on the topic of Mr. Browne, I am pleased to say that he will be hosting a spey clinic from July 27- Aug. 3rd at Camp Brûlé. Topher has tremendous experience with the spey rod and has such an easy handed approach to teaching spey casting that even a bungler like myself was able to get very comfortable with my casting within a few hours. The thing that caught my attention right away was his ability to match rods and lines. Navigating through rods and line weights is quickly becoming a degree worthy pursuit and I was impressed with Topher's understanding of the grain weight required to load up some of these two handers. We still have a few slots, so if thats some that intrigues you, beginner or veteran, don't hesitate to give me a shout!

 Following Topher's week, we are pleased to announce that we have reached an agreement with Master reel maker, William Olson, to host a week from Aug. 3-10. This stays in keeping with our philosophy of mixing in our heritage with the future. If your a gear head or a fan of antiquity, this is the week to check out. William, a laid back lad from Utah, has been making some serious art work for some time now. His serpentine crank reels are being considered in the same breath with the likes of Bogdan and Vom Hofe. The difference  is the type of material available now but based upon the traditional aesthetic. Function and form!  I hope that folks will take some interest in William's efforts ( http://olsonreels.com/index.html ) even if they cannot make it up to camp for that week!

Rounding out our Aug. events, I'd like to let the dog lovers and dog hunting enthusiasts know that Don Bates, bush pilot, dog trainer extraordinaire and qualified CKC and NAHRA judge will be hosting a 4 night/3 day package from Aug.10-14. Don is pleased to have an opportunity to discuss all aspects of health, obedience training, hunting and will be exhibiting some of his dogs in the field. I can't recommend Don highly enough and can back that up, as I have recently picked up one of his pups.( http://www.doindogs.com/ )

Brian Chou, Northwestern Spey master and Thomas and Thomas Pro will be joining us at Brûlé from Sept. 20-25. Brian represents the young, immensely knowledgable and enthusiastic school of guides  This is a great opportunity for folks to enjoy some spey instruction as well as fishing techniques using intermediate and skagit lines as well as the traditional floating lines. The bulk of Brian’s fishing experiences are related to the West coast and steelhead fishing and it will be very interesting to see the different techniques, applied to a different species...on the other side of the continent! http://blog.thomasandthomas.com/blog/2012/04/23/pro-staff-qa-brian-chou/

At the end September, Artist Galen Mercer will be returning to tap into the fall colours of our area. Not only is Galen a very talented painter, he has also spent a good deal of his time fly fishing around the world. Well spoken and easy to talk with, Galen has insight into a number of topics that can only come from a wide variety of life experience. Galen’s personality and knowledge fit in well with the heritage setting of Brûlé. http://www.gmercerstudio.com/

So there we have it. A great list of personalities coming into camp this year add in a few other folks, like  UNB fish biology Professor Rick Cunjak and Thomas and Thomas Master bamboo rod builder Troy Jacques and we have an excellent variety of professionals staying with us in the upcoming season. I hope that we can continue to build the momentum that we generated after this past season. I am very happy to say that all my staff from 2013 will be returning and they are every bit as enthusiastic to get the season going as I am!

On one last note, We have decided to join the 21st century. Camp Brûlé will finally have  a Facebook page as well as an alternate blog section to coincide with our T&T blog. The purpose of both the Facebook and blog section will to bring you regular, even daily, updates throughout the upcoming season!  Join our Facebook page and hopefully we can keep you up to date on the season and upcoming events. https://www.facebook.com/camp.brule

If any of these specialty dates are of interest to you or any other time slot, don’t hesitate to contact me at any time. Also if anyone would like to offer any critique or advice regarding the Facebook site or blogs I’d be most appreciative. 

Thanks for your time folks and I hope you all stay warm!

Best regards,

Kev

Camp Brûlé

www.campbrule.com

Tel: (506) 451-8198

Cell: (418) 391-4877

A Testimonial

Thanks to the Cannon Family for the long time support and this testimonial and to Peter especially for his work in putting this vid together.

30 lber on the Little and Aug. update

Howdy Folks,

I hope everyone is well. I know a lot of people have been wondering how the season has gone to date. All in all it has been a great! All three rivers have enjoyed very high returns of Atlantic salmon and we have been very pleased to take advantage of that. The population demographic has been particularly pleasing with an average landed weight in camp of 18 lbs! All three rivers have enjoyed returns of large MSW salmon and very few grilse. In fact I would hazard that the total grilse numbers represent less than 10% of the totals in the 3 rivers.

The last few days we have been getting some solid rain and we are receiving a very good run of salmon. On Saturday on three rods we landed a 17 lber on the Grande, a 28 lber at Jack Louis on the Little and a 30 lber at Edgar Cyr on the Little.  I've attached a photo of Graham Davy and guide Steve Snyder with the beastly 30 lber! The fishing this past week has been excellent and with the rain we are getting as I speak I expect the next couple of weeks to be very very good. As many of you know I am somewhat reluctant to get on the wire and rave about the fishing but I'll tell you what….its been on fire and I think it will continue.

Give me a shout if you are interested in getting up here and getting into some fish!

Also I'd like to remind people that we have a 5 night/4 day Spey week withThomas and Thomas Spey expert Brian Chou planned for Sept. 22-27th. That will be an excellent time and with all the fish in the systems it should be very productive. I suspect there will be some very aggressive salmon come the end of Sept.!

Sorry if the blog is ragged looking but I'm on my way back out on the river….no rest for the wicked!

Heavy Canoe

It’s been a while since I last sat down to write a post. Without a doubt this has been one of the more hectic off seasons I’ve had in a long time. Lots of news to pass on — some good some bad. Might as well start with the bad and move from there. Two deaths have kind of hurt the Brûlé family. The first was long time Brûlé sport and supporter, John Pratt. John passed on after a very lengthy and courageous battle with cancer. A battle he’d fought since before his first days at Brûlé 9 years ago. I’m going to miss John’s visits to Brûlé. He was a generous, intelligent and kind guy. John championed several causes in his life but never bragged about them. He was well known for his support of substance abuse programs that serve the northern indigenous people, as well as issues involving education for all children. John was also a champion of adopting the idea of catch and release in Quebec and encouraged the continuous improvement of ethics within the fish and game world. My extended family and I will miss John dearly, and I know those of you that fished with him would join me in wishing condolences to his family.

The other bit of bad news that has touched me was the recent passing of my best friend of 13 years, Evening. Evie was simply the best and my canoe is going to be heavier this coming summer in her absence. I hope John and Evie hook up and go fishing together.

Onto some brighter news. We recently held a mini-spey enclave in Stamford, CT. It was a fantastic time and a great opportunity to catch up with old friends and make some new ones. Long time friend, Marty Cannon, was kind enough to invite several of his colleagues to attend. 16 folks showed up to take lessons in two handed casting from Spey Casting Northeast. I’d like to thank instructors Fred, Jerry and Mary for taking the time to lead the class. They did a great job and I hope that some of you take the opportunity to hook up with them in the future.

Thanks as well to Scott and Bob from Compleat Angler for dropping in and chatting about gear and such. The boys know their business and I was pleased to see that Bob also knew a significant amount about the rivers in my area.

And one more thanks to Troy Jacques from Thomas and Thomas for driving out from Greenfield with the bamboo gear and a whack of T&Ts new kit. That new two-handed DNA rod line-up is very, very sweet. The rods, when correctly matched with the latest lines, have got quite a few folks excited to hit the rivers this summer. I hope that this mini-enclave is something that will become an annual event and look forward to seeing everyone again.

As is often the case, these kind of early spring events get my thoughts headed, rightly so, in the direction of opening the camp and getting back out on the river. To that end, we are moving forward in our endeavor to bring more than just a fishing experience to the camp. In the early days there were artists, writers and all sorts of celebrities invited into the camps to fish and entertain — and to increase our understanding and appreciation of salmon and trout. An abundance of books and pictures were produced, as well as theories on everything from parr survival to early discussions on biodiversity and other  land use management ideas.

Sadly those days faded away as society’s interests shifted. Opportunities to discuss events and issues became sidetracked by other pursuits, and fishing camps fell back into a stupour of fishing, fishing and more fishing. While I think fishing, fishing and more fishing is a great great thing, I’d also like to bring back the opther aspects of what the lodge once represented. To that end we are working towards an idea that we refer to simply as A School of Excellence. I have extended an invitation to well-known artist and  fly fisherman Galen Mercer, long time anadromous fish researcher and present holder of the Molson/Meehan Salmon studies chair at UNB. I’ve also invited Rick Cunjak, Lance Wilt and master bamboo rod builder, Troy Jaques. Additionally, we’re planning on hosting 1 or 2 spey enclaves at Brûlé, hopefully led by the talented spey instructor and Pacific Northwest steelhead guru, Brian Chou.

All-in-all, we’re excited for a successful 2013 season and the social, cultural and educational opportunities that it will bring. If you’re interested in learning more about availability or to reserve your spot, drop me an email at kevin@campbrule.com.

Flexibility

When I first started guiding at Brule in 1983, there were 3 guides on staff and we fished our private water on the Little Cascapedia. We made the odd excursion to the government sectors of the Little and Grand Cascapedias but stuck mainly to our private water. One boat would leave around 7 AM and fish through the day until around 3 pm. The 2nd boat would leave around 9 am and come down behind the first boat and fish until 5 pm. We fished mainly the upper sector without much concern for the lower end. Understandably I got tired of following behind the other boat and so we started fishing the lower sector and then trucking the boat up to the top sector and fishing down. This system took more time than the original and we began to incorporate a rotation. Eventually, morning and evening runs were instituted along with a meal break at camp between 1 and 4pm, as opposed to the shore lunch through the heat of the day.

Now 27 years later, in response to our ever increasing desire to provide greater opportunities, we have evolved and refined our rotations even more, incorporating a private sector on the Grande Cascapedia and a rover boat on the public sectors of the Grand, Little and Bonaventure rivers. By creating a system of rotations that would attempt to take advantage of which sectors were fishing best and trying to get our sports into those sectors, we have evolved a system that if we were guests at Brule, we would be pleased with the variety and opportunities offered to get into fish. The most important aspect of this system is the flexibility built in to offer our guests, not just a variety of new water, but the ghillies with the expertise on those beats. Secondly, we are still utilizing our private water as the backbone of our sports experience.

In the past, guest rotations were fixed and at any time everyone knew which beat they would be fishing throughout the week of their stay and only extraordinary circumstance would change it. Now, however, in order to take advantage of the multiple opportunities the area offers, we offer a flexibility to our guests that could see their fishing options change with only a minute's notice. Guests receive a loose framework of their week's fishing and I have learned to make sure that all the pros and cons of every option are discussed with the guests. Why? Because often these opportunities are established by the government sector draws (lotto like 48 hour or 72 hour drawings of names) or sudden cancellations on controlled sectors and may offer an opportunity that may arise only every blue moon.

One thing that experience has taught us is that no two seasons are the same. Variables such as fish numbers and size, weather conditions, water levels, temperature and a myriad of others change from year to year to give each season their own fingerprint. Having said that, experience also offers the opportunity to recognize when conditions are similar to past seasons and the options those conditions can offer to best hook a fish.

We recognize that as great as our private water has been to us, representing on avg. 70% of our total catch over the last 5 years, at times they are not as prolific as some of the public sectors and by getting on some of these sectors we are increasing our catch opportunities Furthermore, variety is the spice of life and this can be especially true in salmon fishing. So the flexibility offers a greater opportunity to fish different water as well. It is entirely possible that one morning we will be fishing the private sector on the Grande Cascapedia and then the upper sectors of the Bonaventure river in the evening.

Traditions are very important to us, equally important is to continue to improve on our client commitment without sacrificing our traditions. Rather than standing on our accomplishments, we're committed to evolving into an outfit that marries the best of the old with the best of the new. Based on client feedback and our own intuition, we feel the flexibility that we are building into our schedule represents that idea. We are really looking forward to sharing as great a variety of the water in our area with our guests as possible...as long as and especially if, it increases our opportunity to hook-up some feesh.